Kurt Hugenberg is the director of the Stereotyping, Prejudice, & Facial Expression Lab at Indiana University. He is a professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. His research focuses on how perceivers' stereotypes, prejudices, and prejudice-related motives influence how we categorize, perceive, and understand others. For more information, check out his CV or contact him directly at khugenb@indiana.edu.
Mattea Sim is a postdoctoral scholar working for Dr. Kurt Hugenberg. Her research focuses primarily on person perception, prejudice, and dehumanization. In particular, her research investigates how perceivers rely on others' physical cues (e.g., bodies) and social identities to make inferences about mental, physical, and emotional sophistication. For more information, view her CV.
Erin Freiburger is a third year graduate student working with Dr. Kurt Hugenberg. Her research interests center on person perception, prejudice, and face-based trait impressions. In particular, Erin investigates how perceivers rely on stereotypes to evaluate others' traits and attributes (e.g., trustworthiness, masculinity, formidability) from their faces alone. For more information, check out Erin's CV.
Neelamberi (Neela) Klein is a first year graduate student working with Dr. Kurt Hugenberg. Her research focuses on the overlap between prejudice, person perception, and emotions. Specifically, her work investigates how experienced and perceived emotions influence the expression of prejudice and trait perceptions of diverse targets. For more information, check out Neela's CV.
Victor D. Quintanilla is a second year graduate student in the lab and also a law school professor. Victor's research investigates civil justice design, access to justice, and legal education by drawing on theory and methods within the field of psychological science, including experiments conducted with judges, lawyers, law students, and members of the public. His research seeks to create, implement, and evaluate social psychological interventions to promote productive mindsets and enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion and the student experience and performance throughout the pipeline of legal education. Victor also harnesses psychological methods to examine how unrepresented persons are socially constructed and stereotyped into pro se parties, and he designs and evaluates social psychological interventions to improve their experiences and outcomes. Victor is thrilled about exploring these research lines within IU's social psych graduate program and to be part of the Hugenberg lab! For more information, checkout Victor's Maurer School of Law Profile!
Jeanine Sempler is a first year graduate student working for Dr. Kurt Hugenberg. Her research interests focus on the intersection of race and gender bias in person perception. In particular, her research investigates intersectional biases in criminal justice contents, such as perceptions of police-civilian interactions and following consequences for use of force justification, blame, and punishment. For more information, check out Jeanine's CV.
Caitlyn Jones is a third year graduate student working under Dr. Mary C. Murphy. Predominantly, she is interested in investigating the ways in which social identities influence interaction, specifically in organizational or academic settings. This interest involves research surrounding stereotyping, prejudice, fixed versus growth mindset, and social identity threat.
Alex Tran (Trần Ngô Quang Anh) is a first-year graduate student from Vietnam advised by Amanda Diekman. He is particularly interested in the psychology of the -isms, bias, prejudice, and interminority coalition. His prior work has focused on the intersectionality of race and gender in social cognition. For more information, check out Alex's CV.
Ritu Gangadhara (she/her) is a senior undergraduate research assistant in Dr. Kurt Hugenberg's lab. She is double majoring in neuroscience and psychology with minors in history and chemistry. She is interested in how stereotype and prejudice affects historically excluded populations, specifically in STEM spaces and especially within medicine. She is also interested in CRT and stereotype threat within Asian American populations. She hopes to attend medical school in the future to focus on intersectionality, humanities, and cultural literacy in the medical field.
Abby Novotny (she/her) is an undergraduate senior majoring in Psychology and Criminal Justice with a minor in Studio Art. She is interested in the intersection of psychology and criminal justice. Specifically, the many interactions between psychology and the law, restorative justice, stereotypes and prejudices, legislation, and social organization interest her the most. She hopes to further her studies in graduate school and expand upon the literature on psychology and the criminal justice system.
Audrey Elizabeth So
